As I continue with the story, it occurs to me how imperfect my writing is. So, thank you, watchers! Thank you, reviewers! I appreciate every little word on the subject of my pet project. It's my safe place. It's where I find solace. Thank you for taking the steps with me, however small. :}

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Chapter 6
Secrets and Flowers


..."Now I think I understand, how this world can overcome a man."
- Avenged Sevenfold

-*-*-

Tifa sat down beside Marlene. There were flowers on the circular table in the middle of Shera's kitchen, and the small girl had arranged them neatly side by side. She was very carefully twisting a few of them into a tiny wreath.
"For Vincent?" Tifa asked her.
"For Denzel," Marlene replied.

Denzel was yet another child of the stigma. A survivor, but an orphan. Marlene had grown very close to him over the past few weeks. Cloud took care of him mostly, but everybody knew he was Marlene's.
Tifa stared at her now, this little girl... she was ten. She should be playing with other children, running, being care-free. Yet her best friend was sick, and another of her many father figures was possibly dying.

Before Vincent's illness, it hadn't been unusual to see the two of them together. Vincent never seemed to mind Marlene tagging along behind him, oddly enough. Tifa thought Marlene admired him because Vincent didn't treat her like a child. He treated her like a person. When they played chess he never condescended to let her win. If he won, there was no rematch. If she won, it was because she outsmarted him that game.

Tifa watched Marlene twisting those sweet-smelling flowers into a wreath and wondered if she was breaking, or coping. Perhaps she was doing both.

-*-*-

If someone were to peek briefly into Dr. Omagi's secondary lab, at first they wouldn't see anything but darkness. Then as their eyes became accustomed to the shadows, they would begin to see blinking lights on hulking machines. Some red, some green.
As they would further observe, a funny sight would meet their eyes - of Cid Highwind in a wooden chair, dry muddy work-boots propped on the white sheet on Vincent's cot, arms crossed, chin merely half an inch from his chest as he nodded and snored in his sleep.

Now, a pair of eyes did observe him. Crimson red eyes, half-open and tired looking. Vincent stared through the sterile darkness of the lab at the muddy boots (a few dry pieces of dirt had crumbled onto the white sheets). He took in the hulking barely-there shadow of Cid himself, sleeping with a half-smoked smoldering cigarette in his mouth. This Vincent had to smile at.
He thought two things right then. One thought was: Wild chocobos couldn't keep him away.
The second thought was: Is he trying to kill me?

This thought referred to the smoldering cigarette which was slowly leaving a trail of ashes across the sleeping pilot's shirt. Vincent reached, and very carefully took the cigarette and extinguished it in the empty glass on his bedside table.
Vincent simply looked at Cid awhile. Then, he closed his eyes and forced himself to try and sleep.

He did not open his eyes when a triangle of light from the opening door cut through the heavy darkness, and a figure stepped through it. He heard a soft chuckle come from the figure as whoever it was saw Cid, then soft footsteps near his bedside. The sudden muted blue glow of light from a computer monitor, then the tapping sound of a keyboard.

Dr. Omagi whispered, "I'm putting him under heavy sedation," and she must have tapped Cid on the shoulder, for the pilot snorted awake now.
"...What? Meaning?" he sounded sleepy.
"..Meaning you can go to bed now if you like. Vincent isn't going anywhere."
A few seconds of muted silence, and then, "Why don't you stuff it where the sun don't shine, Doc."

A muffled sound, a creak of the wooden chair. Vincent guessed that Cid had his arms crossed stubbornly, was probably leaning back in that precarious way people do sometimes, so that only two legs of the chair are touching the floor.

"I already stuffed it. Felt great."
The pilot snorted with muffled laughter. "Holy crap, you're a perv."
"Takes one to know one."
Two more seconds of silence. The doctor stepped quietly around the bed, doing things to her computers. Vincent felt Cid shift his boots on the bed.

"...I'm doing it tomorrow," the doctor whispered.
..."Doin' what?"
"Studying the materia. That's why the sedation. I want him to be as stone-cold out of it as possible."
Vincent's mind picked at this. What materia?
"Come to your senses, then, huh?" The pilot muttered.
"I simply had to think about it. Come on, we can talk more outside."

Muffled, soft footsteps. That was the doctor. Vincent felt Cid's boots shift again and then a spring in the mattress squeaked, and there was a sudden release of pressure on one side of the bed when Cid got up. There was a creak of the chair moving, another thump, then a shushed swear from the pilot as he stubbed his toe on something solid in the darkness.

Vincent willed the door to remain open, for at least the pilot's voice to remain floating into the empty shadows. But Cid thumped away quietly, the door squeaked on its hinges, and the triangle of light which had cut through the darkness was reduced to a sliver, a tiny beam of light, and then finally, complete shadowed silence as the door was closed.

Sedation...his mind whispered. Or perhaps it was some other part of him. ...She's putting me under heavy sedation.
Anger. Soft and heavy this time, like the hot breath of a fevered hound on his neck.
What gives her the right?

He was so tired of struggling. Finally he was angry, not just at himself, but at his darker part. The one that vexed him, hurt him.
The anger, stronger this time, flexed through him like a small tidal wave. Distantly, he heard the sound of a machine beeping an erratic rhythm.

Stop it, he willed himself, stop...leave me be.
Then, for the first time, an answer came, clear as a bell.
But what gives her the right? What gives her the right...to do this to us?
Us?
We. We are...
What are we?

Suddenly a feeling, like being folded over like a card, torn painfully into two.
Vincent opened his eyes and his vision was doubled. Dark red flooded his vision and he could see perfectly in the darkness.
He answered back, though he was trying to swim towards the surface again like a drowning person.
If Cid thinks it's all right, then I think it's all right, too. Go away, Galian!

His left hand came up of its own accord, ripped IV tubes from his right arm. Vincent heard the beeping noise stop short very suddenly.
A feeling of tearing now, absolute pain. He wasn't made for two entities. He was one man, one monster.
Two monsters.
What the hell am I?

Pain. Wanting blood. Wanting to take life. Insanity.
Frantically Vincent waded under the red tide of rage. Did that growling noise just come from his own throat?
No. He wouldn't stand for this. He had struggled far too long with it.

If his mind had an actual voice, he would have shouted at this moment, the only thing he knew instinctively to say.
What did Cid do for us? Tell me!

These strangely commanding words brought on an unexpected silence. Vincent had the distinct feeling that his other half was now hesitating. He waited for a response. Then he realized it was up to him, and suddenly he knew which memory to give the monster.
It flooded his mind, their mind, with warmth; he remembered the sunshine falling onto the white sheets.

He...took our hand.

Remembering the warmth, the connection, that anchor to the sane world. The roughness of Cid's hand. The faint musky lingering odor of cologne. What else?, Vincent prompted. What else has he done for us?

Other memories, warm and vivid, flooded his mind like a deck of cards. Standing on the balcony of the Highwind, Cid smoking a cigarette. Laughing at some long-forgotten joke. A clap on the shoulder. A friendly jibe. The pilot turning his face to the blazing blue sky and saying, "I'll always want to be up there. That's my reason for living, you know."

A sudden feeling of two merging slowly into one. But not before Vincent caught something in Galian's thoughts, something strange, a terrified rough question that faded away from his mind even as it echoed: Do we love him..?
All anger fell away, and his heart beat slowed.
Do we...?

(And what does Galian want?...Vincent wondered distractedly.)

So Galian sank back into the back of his consciousness, and Vincent knew, could nearly feel physically, that the beast was curled up with its claws closed firmly over its enormous chest (somewhere in his mind, Galian sent that lonely question up from the depths again) and then quite suddenly he was Vincent again, and he gasped.

He realized his hands had become stiff fists. He was clutching the white cover tight enough for his nails to cut into his palm. When he relaxed them, a faint dizziness accosted him.
He was one man again, finally. His own memories had brought him up like a lifeguard.

But how could he explain even to himself this strange sudden need? He was dim right now. He couldn't think. Yet he knew what he wanted, knew it because of the ache in his chest, knew it because of Galian's intrinsically childlike curiosity - Do we love him?

Desperately, he wanted that feeling again, of Cid's hand closing over his fingers. (Galian wants this too, oddly enough -) He didn't just want the memory - he wished for an anchor worthy of reality. Vincent was not in one-hundred percent control of himself right now, and it was that lack of control which ached at him, prodded him with a steely finger. But he thought, just once, if Cid would take his hand again...
Do we love him? What a strange question.

The crazy void which threatened him spun light into its depths like a black-hole, gazed at him and begged him to jump. It was an endless expanse like the sky. But on the other side of it...Who else but Cid Highwind would stand there and scoff? Cid Highwind, who would blow cigarette smoke right into the face of death, then brag about it later. The man who piloted an airship and always had his craggy, smirking face tilted towards his own sky, a blazing blue one, filled with white clouds and hope.

Vincent did love him. So much that this realization numbed him, and even made his darker half hesitate, such was the strength of his almost wordless answer - Yes Galian we love him - He couldn't ask himself what it meant, or why he did, just that there was this staring, empty ache in his chest always looking for completion. And Cid seemed to fulfill that ache with his presence - could tame it with one glance of his bright intelligent eyes.

Vincent couldn't process anymore. He simply sat there breathing and thinking of nothing until blackness dimmed his mind into something like a restful sleep. And on the other side of his mind, the image of the pilot glimmered inside his dreams, then, unbidden, faded away into nothingness.
And Galian slept.

-*-*-

Outside the lab, the light near the door shined yellow over the muddy streets of Rocket Town. Mud... you couldn't avoid it in this place, Cid contemplated. It had always been like that. It made the town seem actually poor, destitute, a place where good wishes and dreams went to die.

"What is this materia thing anyway?" Cid asked the doctor. "Have you figured that out at least?"

The woman's profile was sharp in the contrasting darkness between the glowing light and the deep darkness of night. She looked tired, but determined. The set of her chin, the straightness of her shoulders, showed Cid volumes about her.
"I don't know. I wish I did."
"Oh."

He didn't let his shoulders slump, though. Things like this...they agonized him, but at the same time patience was a virtue. Though he hated this waiting, this not knowing. Especially these tantalizing secrets. Who had Dr. Lucrecia Crescent been, and what the hell was in that materia that was keeping the Stigma away from Vincent's beating heart?

Sick of thinking about it, he grunted.
"Listen, you've done a lot. How about we wade through this mud over to Shera's? I make a mean cup of Earl Grey tea."

-*-*-

At first the Doctor just stood there in the brightly-lit kitchen, looking hesitant, as if someone might scold her for simply being there.
"Hey, don't go. You just got here. Sit," Cid commanded.
"It just occured to me...I..." she glanced around.
"Look I know you're a workaholic scientist. You've got things to do. I understand that. But you told me yourself Vincent aint' goin' anywhere. So sit down and drink yer goddamn tea."

The Doctor sat.
"Is he always like this?" she muttered to Shera.
"Yup."

"That's better. ...hey what in the blazing heck is this?!"
Cid stared in horror at the skinny black cat that was weaving around his feet, purring loudly and hypnotically.
Shera laughed. "It's the cat you never wanted. Isn't he adorable? His name is Bob."
"Yeah I fucking hate it!" ...then after that, he raised his eyebrows. "And Bob has no balls. You captured him, then took away his lady lovin' privelages? You oughta be ashamed of yourself. That's animal cruelty right there."
"He's de-clawed too..."
"All right that's it, get outta my sight. No goddamn tea for you."

But when the kettle steamed and whistled, Cid nonetheless poured her a cup, huffing as he did so. Shera just grinned.
"No tea for me?" she prompted teasingly.
"Shuttup, Shera," he muttered darkly.

The cat, happy that his new target was sitting, now hopped up into Cid's lap, purring almost maniacally.
"It's a damn insult to mankind, is what it is..." Cid was saying through the thickness of a muffled sneeze.

The circular table gleamed, the kitchen smelled of just having been cleaned. Shera was sitting to the right of the doctor. Tifa was standing up, leaning over and fiddling with the flowers Marlene had left over from her wreath project. She was arranging them in a clear plastic vase she had found under the counter.
Tifa did this with a strange reverence that was lost on Cid. Only God knew why females loved flowers so much.

"You were right, Cid. This is..."
The doctor closed her eyes, sniffing experimentally at the steam rising from her faded white coffee mug.
"It's really good. Spicy. What's in it?"
"Highwind secret, so..."
"Can't say?"
"In the words of my late pop, 'hell no.'"

The doctor sighed and appeared to relax completely for the first time since Cid had met her the week before.
"I appreciate this," she said softly.
"No prob. So doc, would you mind if I asked you a nosy question?"

Cid was leaning back in his chair, eyeing the cat now curled up in his lap, though strangely enough making no move to shove it away.
A smile played in the corners of Dr. Omagi's mouth.
"Would it stop you if I were to say no?" she teased.
"No."
"Then full steam ahead."
Cid wasted no time. "What got you into this science business?"

She laughed merrily. "That's your question? Okay I have one. What got you into piloting?"
"Touche` m'dear."
"I believe the answer to both would be passion. You probably had a passion for airplanes as a child, right? And I wanted to know everything."
The doctor appeared to contemplate, then said slowly, "...No. Not only that, I wanted to change the world. I still do. I'd also be lying if I didn't add that it's also a completely egocentric goal for me."

Cid shrugged. "We've all got an ego."
"Yeah, and for a good reason. I have to admit, I'm in awe of you. You, and Tifa, and the rest."
"I'll be damned. How come?"

The doctor almost seemed girlish when she smiled now. For a second, Cid could see the shy, quiet thing she must have been in her high school days.
"Do you even have to ask? Meteorfall..." she shook her head, letting the words trail off. "It was a big deal. For everybody. For the planet. You helped save all life as we know it. There's almost no way I can live up to that."

Cid stared at his cup of Earl Gray tea. When he looked up at the doctor, his eyes were stunningly clear.
"Sure you can. Cure Vincent. The scope may not be as big, but it sure as hell would change my world, doc. You better believe it."

-*-*-

When it got to be later than they liked, and everybody was yawning, the doctor began to leave for bed, but stopped, taking one moment to admire the flowers in the center of the circular table.
"Those are pretty," she remarked, "Mind if I take one?"
"Sure. They aren't mine, they're Marlene's, but she's been spreading them around like crazy," Tifa told her. "Honestly, she'd probably make you take the whole bouquet."

After Tifa left along with Dr. Omagi, it was just Cid and Shera.
Shera leaned back in her seat, stretching. Cid was scratching Bob behind the ears with a contemplative expression on his face.
So Shera got a fucking cat, so what?
It was just one of those things Cid had decided he didn't want in the house, and...was it really his house anymore? For months he'd been away from it.
Being back here was somehow like walking into a distant stranger's home.

He was more of a dog person, anyways.

"Shera?" he questioned.
Something in his voice must have caught her attention because she looked up.
"Hmm?"

For one tiny little second he caught a whiff of bittersweet nostalgia, how cute she was when she was sleepy. He remembered how easily cuddled she was in bed with her arms crossed over her chest, how her mousy brown hair was always clean and brushed, how her skin would smell of some lotion that was supposed to be scentless but had an odor anyway.
Clean memories. Gone memories.

"You got a cat. Have you... I dunno. Moved on?"
Out loud, the question sounded stupid to him.

Shera sighed. "Sometimes I'm afraid that I haven't. But you always seemed to be moving on. So I decided I couldn't wait on you forever..."
Her words trailed off into the silence, then she said, "...I'm sorry, it just seems so cruel doesn't it? We never had this discussion."
"No, I guess we didn't. And you're right about that. I can't seem to stay in one place for very long."

A few seconds of silence passed between them, and then Cid asked, "So how's life with a cat?"
Shera yawned, covering her mouth with her hand.
"Well he occasionally pukes on the floor and demands my constant attention, so not much different from life with you, I guess."
"Oh har, har."

Shera grinned at him and Cid smiled back, a bit sheepishly.
"So this is it then, huh?" he said to her.
She seemed slightly sad now, though she was still smiling.
"Yes, it is."

For another split second Cid felt distantly terrified, and he thought right then it would be so easy to just fall back into love with Shera, pick up where they left off and put on the relationship again like it was an old but comfortable coat.
But that would be the easy way out. Cid was through with that road...and he was nothing if not adaptable.

It's time to fight, he thought. Fight for the right thing, for what I really want.

"Good night," was all he said after this round of silence.
Shera just laughed.
"Good night, Cid."

The cat purred in his lap. Cid finally pushed it away and it plopped gracefully to the floor on its feet like only a feline can, giving him an indignant yellow stare as he did so.
"Bob," he exulted, "I'm so sorry for what this woman did to you..."
Shera giggled as she exited the kitchen, and Bob followed her, silky black tail swishing prissily.

-*-*-

It was almost final, like chapter in his life had ended. Suddenly it seemed to Cid it was almost as if, were he to blink too much or step on something vital, the very stars themselves would wink out of existence.

As Cid tromped through the frozen mud and looked up at the deep black sky, feeling the cold night wind on his face, he thought maybe for a second everything could be okay again.
But it's delicate, what we have now. One wrong move...

Against all odds, perhaps it would be all right. That was all he could hope for, all he could pray for. And yes, he was scared. Terrified, actually. But it was what drove him as a human being. He wasn't going to let fear take him over.
The stars weren't going anywhere. Neither was Vincent.

Boldened by this thought, Cid continued on to the inn across from Shera's house.

-*-*-

The doctor felt tiredness fall over her as she poured a small glass of water. "Here, have a drink," she told the little yellow flower, then immediately felt a hint of the giggles as she put the flower in the glass.
Oh, no..I've been awake for too long...it's definitely bed time.

She simply stood there, staring at this little yellow flower, not paying attention to the voice in the back of her mind that niggled her. It was always niggling. When you were a scientist, there was always this workaholic little elf in your brain shrieking, "Get to work! Stop slacking! Move it!"

Work...she sometimes wondered, maybe if she wasn't such a workaholic, she'd have more time for family.
Sitting around the table like that with Cid and the others...it had opened her eyes a little bit to her own bitter truths. She was very much a loner.

Randomly, almost offhandedly, she realized, that the voice wasn't trying to tell her to work. It was telling her, "Something's wrong here...something's a bit off."
It was the flower in that glass.
The Doctor pushed all thoughts of family aside, staring at it.

She stood there for what felt like an eternity, and if someone had walked into her lab at this very late hour, they would have seen Dr. Omagi staring at a flower in a glass as if it were the center of the universe. They would hear her muttering under her breath (a habit she didn't know that she even had) and she even swayed on her feet every now and then, her eyes glazed over. She was quite simply in that deep place a hard thinker goes to when there is a problem to solve.

The flower looked fresh. Too fresh. She knew it wasn't indiginous to this region. And where had the group come from directly after Vincent's last collapse?
From Midgar.
Midgar, which was far away from this small muddy place named Rocket Town. And they hadn't been back there since...

Dr. Omagi wracked around in her brain for a time.
Two weeks, two and a half?
Yes. They've been here for exactly two and a half weeks without going anywhere. This flower came from Midgar, I'm certain of it, silly as that sounds. No plant can grow in that toxic place. Except maybe...in a couple of rare places.

But this flower, it looked strange. Not wild, certainly, but almost bred. And here it was, this simple little plant, as fresh and pretty as the day it was picked.
It'd been like this for nearly three weeks.
Three weeks, the Doctor thought, placing a hand to her temple.

Aloud, she said, "What's your secret?"
The flower, mysterious in its yellow simplicity, obviously said nothing.
I've gotta stop talking to inanimate plants...
The Doctor, who had been feeling just a tad crazy tired before, was now sparked with a new energy as she carried the flower to her lab, all thoughts of bed (and her newfound loneliness) forgotten.

-*-*-

What one had to do, the Doctor surmised, was get into the Shinra databases. No problem. She used to work there. After the fallout of Shinra, she still had their codes locked tight in her brain. She worked for a few minutes, feeding these codes into security boxes. Finally, the Shinra website pulled up, and she couldn't help but feel a little bit sick as she stared at the familiar settings. She was, it seemed, a completely different person from back in those days.
She wondered sometimes how easily she could have gone the way of Hojo.

Sighing, she thought for a moment, pushing her memories back into the back of her mind where they belonged. Her long fingers poised like frozen dancers over the keyboard. What would she look for?
F-L-O-W-E-R, she typed.
There was a soft beep as the computer sent her a negative. Knowing Shinra it was something that went deeper than plantlife.
M-A-K-O, was the next thing she typed.
Beep! Went the computer.
Nothing on the mako, all except lists of common knowledge that everybody and their mother knew about the stuff. Pages and pages of it.
Her blue eyes scanned this anyway, searching for an attention-catching title.

Biting her bottom lip now, she narrowed her eyes, fingers still poised over the keyboard. The soft glow of the computer screen reflected in her glasses, made her face seem pale and ghostly.

Think...who in Shinra had the most secrets? Well that was a hard one to answer. You might say that the whole company had been rife in them.
But a certain woman named Lucrecia Crescent had seemingly made a career out of keeping secrets. They were buried everywhere in the Shinra databases. In files, in half-coded discs, in floppies and even, Dr. Omagi had heard, in materia.

It was here at this thought that the Doctor turned to look at Vincent, breath catching in her chest.
She caught herself simply staring at his pale face, entranced that in sleep there was something of a deep-rooted innocence in him. He seemed caught in a moment of perfect peace. Oh, how she didn't want to disturb it...but tomorrow she would have to. Only God knew what would happen when she took the materia from his chest.

Her deft fingers sprang into action. She typed a name into the Shinra-database searchbox with a feeling of nearly breathless trepidation as the man himself slept nearly two feet from her chair:
V-I-N-C-E-N-T V-A-L-E-N-T-I-N-E.